Reed v. Reed

Reed v. Reed
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 19, 1971 Decided November 22, 1971
Full case name	Sally M. Reed, Appellant, v. Cecil R. Reed, Administrator, etc.
Citations	404 U.S. 71 (more)
Subsequent history	93 Idaho 511, 465 P.2d 635, reversed and remanded
Holding
Administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes.
Court membership
Chief Justice Warren E. Burger Associate Justices Hugo Black · William O. Douglas John M. Harlan II · William J. Brennan, Jr Potter Stewart · Byron White Thurgood Marshall · Harry Blackmun
Case opinions
Majority	Burger, joined by unanimous court
Justices Black and Harlan retired from the Court on September 17th and 23rd, respectively, and took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.

Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971), was an Equal Protection case in the United States in which the Supreme Court ruled that the administrators of estates cannot be named in a way that discriminates between sexes. After the death of their adopted son Richard Lynn Reed. Sally and Cecil Reed sought to be named the administrator of their son's estate; the Reeds were separated. The Idaho Probate Court specified that "males must be preferred to females" in appointing administrators of estates, so Cecil was appointed administrator. In a unanimous decision, the Court held that the law's dissimilar treatment of men and women was unconstitutional. From Chief Justice Burger's opinion:

To give a mandatory preference to members of either sex over members of the other, merely to accomplish the elimination of hearings on the merits, is to make the very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and whatever may be said as to the positive values of avoiding intrafamily controversy, the choice in this context may not lawfully be mandated solely on the basis of sex.

Significance

For the first time in history, the Supreme Court ruled that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution applied to differential treatment based on legal sex.

Protecting women

While the first equal protection case to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, Reed did not issue a particularly strong prohibition of this type of legislation. Instead of elevating women to suspect classification by reviewing the law under a very restrictive standard known as strict scrutiny, the court subjected the Idaho statute using rational basis review. The court found that the Idaho statute failed to satisfy this lower standard because the statute did not provide a rational way to pursue a legitimate state interest. This had a less profound effect than the litigant's supporters had hoped, "because the reasonableness test was so malleable, challenges to discriminatory legislation would now have to be resolved on a case-by-case basis."

While the first equal protection case to prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex, Reed did not issue a particularly strong prohibition of this type of legislation. Although the Court acknowledged, under the traditional standard of review for equal protection claims, the rational basis standard, that the statutory objective was legitimate and that the sex-based classification did advance that objective, it nevertheless declared that the arrangement violated the Equal Protection Clause. The ambiguity in the Court's reasoning left room for further efforts seeking a more intensive standard of review in gender discrimination cases.

See also

• Craig v. Boren
• Frontiero v. Richardson

External links

• Text of Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71 (1971) is available from: Justia · Findlaw · resource.org · OpenJurist